One Single Change
by Artemis Ignitan
Summary: Yuusei would have done anything to keep his friends safe. Even if it meant giving them up. Companionfic to w nymph's "The Driven Leader". AU! A collection of drabbles from Yuusei's POV, where one small difference changes everything. Martyr!verse.


**(A/N): ...Hi! :D I've been away from fanfic writing for a while-I've been distracted with summer vacation and roleplaying and such and such...sorry for those who have been awaiting my multichap fics' next update. I promise I'll get to them-I don't like leaving things unfinished. It's just that I'm such a horrible procrastinator.**

**Ahem. So, you're wondering what this is, I expect. Well, this is a result from roleplaying on LiveJournal-just like _One and Not the Same_ was. This time, I played a Yuusei who, in an alternate universe, managed to trick Security into thinking he was Team Satisfaction's leader. I hath dubbed this AU verse "Martyr!verse". Now, another LJ-er, fortuneladyicey, who we affectionately call "Icey", and who you FFNet frequenters might know as _w nymph_, picked up the Kiryuu from Martyr!verse, and brought him to life in a way I hadn't envisioned, but fit more perfectly than I could have ever imagined. She was charmed enough with him to write a few drabbles, which are on her LJ, and also on . And I was charmed enough with those drabbles to reply with a few of my own. This initial set of drabbles were written as a companionfic to hers, known here on as _The Driven Leader_, which explores the time before the arrest from Kiryuu's point of view_._**

**Warnings: Contains spoilers of flashbacks in episode...33, or something. I think. That or 32. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own 5D's. Only Martyr!Verse is something I can claim to own (but I don't, since I bet more than one person has contemplated this scenario).**

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One Single Change

Yuusei had never seen Kiryuu look so elated.

After everything they had gained, even he could afford to forget what they almost lost _(him)_, and feel like _(for the moment)_ kings of the entire world. _(Their small, isolated world of chain link fences and criminals and slums that was Satellite.)_

Because, as Kiryuu colored the last spot on the map black with hands shaking and threw said map into the sky _(letting it flutter away in the wind along with their cares and their worries)_, they had done it, fulfilled their goal, they had made Satellite theirs.

And then they laughed, almost unanimously, and all unrestrained, free as the map colored black. Yuusei felt their joy, their satisfaction with themselves and what they had done, and he couldn't help but join in on his friends' happiness, relishing in their smiles and joy-faces on Jack and Crow that he hadn't seen in a long time, Kiryuu almost never.

This, he thought, was true satisfaction, seeing everybody smiling. He wished _(unreasonably and uncharacteristically of his realistic character)_ that this moment could grow and stretch across time, to last forever.

-----

Yuusei watched as he continued to hunt.

He saw as Kiryuu grasped at the moment long gone in the past, the moment of freedom when their laughter sailed through the sky. He knew that Kiryuu wanted everyone to stay together, because their unity now just wasn't the same _(could never be the same)_ as that one time, when they had been bonded by their joy.

He saw what Kiryuu feared _(because he feared the same to a lesser extent)_, and his desperate attempts to keep everyone in their team (_their FAMIILY)_ together, to keep them bound by that purpose.

And he couldn't help but be _(disappointed in)_ worried for Kiryuu. Because he saw what Kiryuu was too blinded by his fear to see-that he himself was driving his family away. Instead of trusting in them to stay, he tried to entrap thhem into staying, with promises of glory long gone.

Yuusei wondered how Kiryuu had gotten this way. How he had lost trust in them.

He wanted to tell Kiryuu so many times that he didn't have to worry, that he could trust everyone to stay with him-they were his nakama, and he was theirs. Their bonds would never shatter, never break. Kiryuu never seemed to listen.

Or maybe it was that he was afraid to listen, to trust.

Yuusei wanted to warn him that he was driving his family away, but he didn't. Even when looking back at that time, he wondered why he never said a word abou that.

Perhaps it was because he never thought that Crow and Jack would leave.

-----

Yuusei looked on in fear as Kiryuu had found what he declared to be their true, final enemy.

Had Kiryuu gone mad? Perhaps, he had never been quite the same after Crow and Jack had left. He had hunted even harder than before for a purpose to bring them all back together _(and Yuusei could never help but muse at how pointless it all was, he still had firm faith in Jack and Crow, and that they would come back regardless of what Kiryuu did-they were nakama after all)_.

He listened stoically as Kiryuu's insistence that Satellite would truly be free if Security was taken down, that they could do it if everyone was just back together.

That this would be Team Satisfaction's Last Duel.

_(Last duel indeed...)_

-----

Yuusei couldn't do it. He just couldn't do it.

He couldn't leave Kiryuu on his own.

He had thought, perhaps, that if he had left Kiryuu alone, without anybody to aid him, he would stop, reconsider-know that no matter what he did, they would still be nakama...

But, a deep dark voice inside him _(the voice of cold reason)_ told him that Kiryuu would still do it, that he was beyond the point of reason...that they had to stop him.

He knew that Kiryuu wanted Team Satisfaction together again. He knew that by getting the others, he'd be playing right into Kiryuu's hands.

But he couldn't, he thought as he ran into Crow's home and found one of the orphans to deliver the message, couldn't leave his nakama alone.

-----

Yuusei could feel the tension between the four of them, something he had hoped would never have happened.

Kiryuu seemed oblivious to it all _(or perhaps he was ignoring it, hoping against hope just like Yuusei was)_ and cackled madly in glee as he went on about Team Satisfaction's last duel.

The look of shock and betrayal on Kiryuu's face as they put down the duel disks on the table cut Yuusei to the core.

He couldn't let Kiryuu do this to himself, Yuusei thought as Kiryu seemed to become even more maddening than before.

And he wondered, in the deep dark recesses of his mind, where the cold truth _(something he usually embraced, but had been avoiding as of late)_ resided, whether they would really be able to stop him.

-----

Yuusei acted on impulse when he tackled Kiryuu to the ground, stopping him from killing that Security officer. The only thought rushing through his head was to stop him, he had to stop him. He had to make this madness end.

He wavered seeing the hurt and betrayed expression on Kiryuu's face, his grip loosening slightly. But, he thought, as Kiryuu struggled and Jack and Crow looked on, that this was for the best, that perhaps, when all this was over, things could go back to the way they once were.

The cold truth smacked him in the face again as they all hid away from Security, insisting that things would never, ever be the same no matter how things ended-that Security would never stop looking until they had found the culprit, and as long as Security kept looking, they could never help Kiryuu. They had to get Security away from him, or it would never be over.

It was a split second decision made on the moment, that moment when Yuusei decided that he had to do what he should have done all along-listen to the truth. He told Jack and Crow to wait there, to hold Kiryuu down while he tried to make them leave.

"What are you gonna do?" Crow asked.

"...I don't know," Yuusei lied as he walked off, not pausing, not looking back.

Kiryuu's look of anger bored into the back of his skull, burning itself straight to the front of his mind as he walked away.

-----

Yuusei faced the judge with no remorse shown on his face as he calmly and coldly stated his guilt in all charges. He saw the burning expression of distaste on the jury's faces as he was sentenced-life imprisonment for a terrorist attack on Security's Satellite headquarters, additional life sentences for the lives lost in the explosion, and a pending execution sentence for a possible murder of a Security officer, who's life still hung by a thread.

He never winced once as the gavel came down, the heavy bang resounding across the room and in his ears, signifying the end of the life he once knew, and the beginning of another.

As the marker was seared into the right side of his face, he bit his toungue to try and not let out a cry-it was futile. He could feel his screams resounding across the narrow chamber and he berated himself for showing weakness.

The scar tissue still burned with heat after the procedure was done, a line of fire dancing up and down his face. That marker burned with all the memories of what he had lost-no, of what he had given up, of what he could never return to.

And for the first time, he realized the consequences of his actions.

-----

Yuusei spent a lot of time thinking.

He spent a lot of time dwelling on the days of old, when Team Satisfaction had stayed together. And he understood now, why Kiryuu was so desperate to keep his nakama close.

He searched through his fading memories of those times, looking for some sign, some reason why it all fell apart. Yuusei saw-it had been because he had let Kiryuu think that they only stayed with him because he was their savior, because he gave them purpose. If he had let him know sooner, before Kiryuu had fallen, if he had told him simply: "We are nakama. We'd never leave..."

Yuusei berated himself for being weak, for not being able to find the reason before, and for not being able to stop the team's downfall. And he decided that he had to make up for it, somehow.

There were things going on in the prison, so much injustice and foul treatment. So much that the current prisoners had all but lost hope.

He had to be strong here, to make up for being weak for his friends. He had to stop others from falling into the madness like Kiryuu had done.

And so he did his best.

But every now and then, when he was alone in his cell, he wondered about those that he had _(not really)_ given up, and he hoped, prayed, that they were together again, that they were working together to rebuild the bonds that had been strained between them.

He had done all that he could to give them that chance, after all...so that they could be free again.

It was all for them.

---FIN---

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**(A/N): Obligatory begging for reviews inserted here.**


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